The Best Binoculars for Birds, Nature, and the Outdoors

Updated October 5, 2018

We’ve read through this guide and are still confident in all of our picks.

Your guide

Daniel S. Cooper

To find the best binoculars, we had a professional ornithologist spend over 100 hours field-testing 17 pairs against his own $2,500 Leica Ultravids. After using our test pairs in the mountains and hills of Southern California, then on a research trip to the rain forests of southern Mexico, he found that the Athlon Optics Midas ED 8×42 pair was the best of the group, offering performance comparable to his Leicas for a fraction of the price and the widest field of view out of all the binoculars tested. This means you’ll see more, and it will look better.

Buying Options

The Athlon Optics Midas ED 8×42—along with nearly all of the other binoculars we tested—are the beneficiaries of a revolution in optical quality caused by the falling costs of precision manufacturing and optical treatments. For under $300 you can get a pair of binoculars that matches—that’s matches, not comes close to—products that cost hundreds, or even thousands, more. The Athlon Midas ED pair’s optics aren’t its only strong suit: These are exceptionally durable binoculars that easily withstood the humid, dusty, and hostile environment of the Mexican rain forest and harsh sun of the Californian desert. And their focus dial adjusts reliably and smoothly across a wide range of depths, making it easy to focus on what you’re trying to see, no matter where it is.

Buying Options

But if the Athlon Optics Midas ED binoculars aren’t available, the slightly less-expensive Celestron TrailSeeker 8×42 binoculars are a terrific choice with a comparably wide field of view. However, the edges of the image have noticeable blurring, whereas the view through the Athlon Optics Midas ED pair is clear from edge to edge.

Buying Options

If you’re on a supertight budget and are willing to see less of a scene at a time, you can get the Carson VP 8×42 for nearly half the price of the Athlons and get almost all the performance, with only a slight compromise in field of view (how much of the landscape you’ll see through the binoculars).

Buying Options

The low-cost Pentax AD 8 x 25 WP are ideal for day hikes or airplane travel, where you want good-quality optics in a small package. Everything worked—the eyecups felt solid and comfortable, the hinges weren’t too loose, and focusing was quick and surprisingly accurate at any distance. Of course, this is not the pair for serious birding, stargazing, or anything requiring exceptional detail. But if you want inexpensive, very compact binoculars, this is the pair for you.

Why you should trust us

I’ve been birding since grade school and have spent the past 20 years working as a professional ornithologist, traveling worldwide to look for and learn about birds. I’ve published a couple dozen scientific papers and wrote Important Bird Areas of California, published in 2004 by Audubon California. Professionally, I lead birding trips for both beginners and experts, and for my “day job” I perform environmental surveys for individuals, conservation groups, corporations, and government agencies.

The author testing binoculars in Mexico. Photo: Dan Cooper

If my Leicas got lost tomorrow, I wouldn’t hesitate to replace them with one of our top picks.

I’ve peered through binoculars of different types and made by dozens of different brands over the years, and had settled on my current pair of $2,500 Leica Ultravids. After eight weeks of testing over 30 pairs of binoculars in the $150 to $350 price range (and a few that were cheaper or more expensive), I can honestly say that if my Leicas got lost tomorrow, I wouldn’t hesitate to replace them with one of our top picks.

Who this is for

Anyone looking to make far-away objects appear a bit closer should consider a good pair of binoculars. But you might wonder why this story is so oriented toward bird watching. The answer is simple: Binoculars that are great for birders are great for anyone looking to make things appear closer—whether you’re hunting, watching sports, or otherwise. That’s because birding asks everything you need to ask of binoculars. So even if you never plan to seek a scissor-tailed flycatcher or a harpy eagle, birding binoculars will do what you ask. (But you really should try out birding; for more info, contact your local Audubon Society, or, in North America, pick up either The Sibley Guide to Birds or the Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America.)

No matter what you plan to gaze at, your binoculars need to do two things well: They need to make distant objects closer, and they need to make them clearer. The better the binoculars, the better you can see those birds up in trees, those athletes down on a field, the antlers of a deer crouching at the edge of a woodlot, or the butterflies gathering at a drying patch of mud along a trail. We’ve tried to pick binoculars that do well at all those tasks.

Challenging conditions—dense vegetation and varying levels of light.

How we picked

So, what exactly makes good binoculars? Binoculars’ optics consist of three main components that affect their performance: the ocular lenses (in the eyepiece), the objective lenses (the lenses that are farthest away from your face), and the prism, which we’ll discuss further in a bit. The ocular lens is a magnifier. So when you see binoculars’ specifications, the first number signifies how much that lens enlarges what you’re looking at. In the case of all the models we tested, that number is an eight, so you’re getting an image size eight times larger than you see with the naked eye. The objective lens gathers light; its related number—in our case, 42—indicates the diameter of that lens in millimeters. The bigger the lens, the more light it can gather.

We chose to limit our tests to 8×42 binoculars for a number of reasons, one being that we found 10x binoculars to be too shaky, like walking around with a fully zoomed telephoto camera lens. Plus, the 42 objective-lens size is perfect for balancing brightness and clarity with weight. Compact binoculars, which have smaller objective lenses, are often much dimmer. They’re not great if you want to truly spot and identify something in the field, though good reasons to use smaller binoculars do exist, as many backpackers and travel-light types will attest. We plan to test compact binoculars soon.

Other no-go categories that we won’t be touching anytime soon are zoom binoculars or binoculars that include a digital camera. In the former case, you’ll end up with optics so compromised (less light-gathering ability, lower clarity) that the convenience of multiple levels of magnification would be quickly negated. In the latter, the quality of the cameras found inside these neither-here-nor-there binoculars is about a thousand years behind even the most basic modern smartphone. Stay away.

The good news is that the true technological improvements in binoculars over the past few years have come not in gimmicky features, but optics. Whereas 20 years ago you might have needed to spend $500 to get decent, waterproof binoculars from a factory in the Midwest, now the recent manufacturing boom in China has brought us increasingly cheaper versions of familiar products, resulting in a crush of nearly identical binoculars—more than 2,000 models right now on Amazon, for example—most of them featuring similar designs.

Left: Vintage (circa 1966) Carl Zeiss porro-prism binoculars. The Zeiss 8×50 binoculars cost $175 back then and were considered the best in the world. Right: Modern roof-prism binoculars. Photo: Dan Koeppel

Most of these binoculars now feature roof prisms, rather than old-fashioned porro prisms. Roof-prism binoculars, which you can identify easily by their “H” shape, draw light in along a straight path through the binoculars, from the objective lens to the eyepiece. Porro-prism binoculars, typically “A” shaped (see photo above), bounce the light along an angled path. Though either design can yield a great pair of binoculars, porro-prism units have, until recently, tended to be cheaper as well as heavier and less durable, though they could potentially yield a better image for less money. These days, roof-prism units are very inexpensive to manufacture, leading to the disappearance of high-end porro units except at the very lowest price points. For more on binocular design, see the Birding Binoculars Guide.

Another technology that has gotten less expensive is the ED lens (“ED” stands for “extra-low dispersion”). ED lenses generally weigh less and transmit light better than standard lenses. Though all of our tested binoculars performed well, of our four picks only the top two use ED lenses.

The last element of today’s great, affordable binoculars is optical coatings. Lens coatings perform various functions, such as improving light transmission, reducing glare, and keeping colors true. Coating quality and levels used to be a key differentiator between cheap and expensive binoculars, but these days, lens coating technology has come down in price. All of our picks use the highest level, which is full multicoating, meaning that all glass surfaces—most binoculars have between 10 and 16 such surfaces, called optical elements—are coated.

Another feature we deemed essential was proper functioning for users with glasses. Your binoculars work only when the proper distance between your eye and the binoculars’ ocular lens (the lens on the eyepiece end) is maintained. Glasses would increase that distance if you didn’t have a way to adjust the inboard or outboard position of the ocular lens. This feature is called eye relief, and the standard recommendation is that those who wear glasses need a minimum of 15 mm of adjustability. Old-fashioned eye relief meant a pair of rubber cups that rolled down to bring your glasses to the proper distance; those cups are still found on some binoculars, but we don’t recommend them, because they’ll eventually stiffen or even tear. Preferable are eyepieces that twist downward into a more compact position, a feature that all of our picks have.

But even with all these improvements, binoculars will vary in important ways. A few models close focus down to 5 feet away or even a little closer, though at least one popular model reaches no closer than 16 feet away, making them a no-go for seeing butterflies and other up-close objects. The field of view (how large an area you see when you look out into the distance) is also variable and differed by more than 20 percent across models tested for this review.

Below our midrange (roughly $150 to $350), the quality differences become apparent. Above our range’s higher end, you don’t necessarily get much, if any, performance advantage. Most brands we investigated tend to offer at least a couple different models of full-size (versus compact) binoculars, claim their models are waterproof (or at least water-resistant), and offer many models with a no-questions-asked lifetime and transferable return policy. Combine this with continuing improvements in glass and optical coating (or at least, a drop in manufacturing cost to the point where higher-quality lenses are now widely affordable), and we appear to be living in something of a golden age of binoculars—one birding website alone offers more than 150 models at our midrange prices.

To find a manageable group of testing finalists, we first eliminated companies that make only one model and that don’t exist outside of their Amazon presence. We also ruled out companies with just one model in our target price range, based on the logic that those binoculars are less likely to be widely available in the future, particularly if they get damaged and you need to return them. This left us with 17 models of 8×42 binoculars, priced mostly under $350:

*As of October 2018, the Eagle Optics Ranger ED and Opticron Explorer WA Oasis-C are no longer available.

How we tested

I took my initial 17 models to a few of my favorite local Southern California beaches, mountains, and deserts for a couple weeks to get a feel for their handling characteristics and durability, and to get a rough feel for their images’ quality. But I couldn’t get an accurate handle on what actually looked better in such a familiar setting. My brain and its stored knowledge of overfamiliar birds take over, and binoculars are a lot harder to evaluate. That’s because with familiar objects, you know what you’re going to see even before you lift the binoculars.

The “act of seeing” is more a confirmation of a couple facts your brain stores, and identification becomes a result of quickly matching a minimum number of those facts with what your eyes tell you. Sure, mockingbirds have sharp, narrow bills, but that’s not usually what you look for in a distant mockingbird; you see a slender gray bird and confirm that it has black-and-white wings, and, hence, isn’t something else. Knowing that mockingbird is pretty much the only thing around with those features—and if nothing else jumps out—your identification of it as a mockingbird is instant. Your total time looking through the binoculars is maybe a second or two.

How much did the binoculars help? Probably not too much. That’s why to really test the quality and effectiveness of the equipment, you need to start with the unfamiliar, such as, say, a set of birds that you don’t see too often. Seeing unfamiliar birds requires the assimilation of a large number of unfamiliar marks all at once, preferably under physically demanding, or at least very different, circumstances.

With that in mind I selected my top five binoculars from the initial tests and took them along with me to unfamiliar territory in southern Mexico for advanced testing. Working in the field is the ultimate test for any pair of binoculars. The optics need to do some very heavy lifting—studying intricate patterns of white vermiculation on the upper back of a woodcreeper before the bird scoots around the trunk of a tree, for example—while my brain sorts through several near-identical species, something I don’t get to do back home.

Buying Options

The binoculars I use day to day as a professional ornithologist are the Leica Ultravid 8×42 model, which I purchased seven years ago for around $2,500. Yet when I looked through the Athlon Optics Midas ED pair, I could not tell much difference between them and my Leicas, which cost around 10 times as much.

What makes the Athlon Optics Midas ED binoculars great? For starters, their brightness. A lot of birding and using binoculars in general involves looking out or up at something much brighter, like the sky, or darker, such as into a dense thicket. Just as your autofocus camera can’t figure out how to illuminate something against a bright (or overcast) sky, binoculars may have difficulty mustering the light needed to brighten the distant object you’re trying to identify. Also tough is the inverse of this situation, looking into dark, dense vegetation, a situation in which you need all the light-gathering ability the binoculars can give you. The Athlon Optics Midas ED performed well on both fronts. For example, several other models tested would not allow me to differentiate throat coloration of warblers in treetops early in the morning. With the Athlons, it was almost as if the glaring, whitish background of sky wasn’t there—the colors popped to life.

During testing in Southern California and/or southern Mexico, a few other models proved very good at bringing in color under harsh conditions, including the Bushnell Legend L Series, Celestron TrailSeeker, Carson 3D, and the Nikon Monarch 5 (my favorite of four Nikon models at the target price point). Neither the Nikon nor the Carson model had the wide field of view at distance the Midas ED boasted. The Nikon was 361 feet at 1,000 yards versus 426 feet for the Athlons, Bushnells, and Celestrons, which had the widest fields of view I tested. The Carson 3D binoculars were incredibly sharp and easily as bright as the Athlons, but felt almost as if they had tunnel vision, likely because their field of view was around 20 percent narrower than that of the Athlons. These field-of-view differences proved more noticeable when trying to differentiate spot-breasted wrens from rufous-and-white wrens as they crawled through vine tangles in southern Mexico, for example; the Nikon pair’s narrower field, which had otherwise excellent glass, seemed to require more time to find the birds than the Athlon pair did (and tellingly, by the end of the trip, I was grabbing the Athlons each morning).

One of the best features of the Athlon Optics Midas ED was the ease and precision of adjusting the focus. It smoothly and accurately adjusts across a wide range of focal depths. Some models, like the Nikon Prostaff 5, focused very quickly, but this often translated to loss of detail at distance, or basically, the smooshing together of anything more than a couple hundred feet away into one focusing position. This sounds confusing, but makes sense if you think of a focusing knob the way you might a volume control. Less rotation between silence and loudness means you can get between the extremes quickly, but you may not be able to get to precisely the level you want; on the other hand, a volume knob with too much rotation will take forever to adjust. With binoculars you want a happy medium that focuses fast but allows for granular accuracy. In other models, even within the same brand (e.g., Nikon Prostaff 7S), this focusing issue was less noticeable, and they performed well in this regard. In still others, such as the now-discontinued Opticron Explorer WA Oasis-C pair, the knob was sluggish, requiring a good crank around several times to focus on anything near or far.

Close focusing is key when trying to see detail on things like butterflies, wildflowers, and the like. Our pick gets as near as 6.5 feet, and though a few binoculars focused closer than that, several contenders didn’t get anywhere near getting near. The Nikon Prostaff 5, for example, couldn’t bring objects any closer than 16 feet into focus. We liked the Prostaff 5 as a budget pick, but we warn that they’re not for looking at butterflies or anything that requires getting ultra-close for detail.

One question you’ll likely have when buying binoculars will be about warranties, especially for brands you’ve never heard of. And the question is valid.

Binoculars get beat up and dusty, and cheap ones go out of alignment in a few weeks or with a good knock, resulting in double vision or blurry patches. For the record, I accidentally dropped the Athlon Midas ED binoculars onto a dirt road in Mexico (right onto the focus knob!), brushed them off and found they worked just fine. Nearly all companies I was able to reach offer a full, transferable, lifetime warranty of the “you can drive over it with a truck” type, but I recommend researching warranties before buying any model, because their details may change in the future.

But take some comfort in knowing that binoculars are now more rugged than ever. They’re about as waterproof as possible, meaning all of the pairs we recommend are sealed against dust and can handle immersion—though if you drop them into a lake, you’ll still need to dive because they don’t float, yet.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The Athlons come with a set of press-in lens caps for the objective (larger) lens; most other binoculars use caps that fit over the lens. The press-ins make for a sleek look, but we found that they tended to fall out, leaving the lens unprotected. But that was the only (minor) flaw in a product that was otherwise close to perfect.

As a more general comment on the current state of binocular manufacturing: With things changing so rapidly, consumers should check that the pair they end up with is the same high-quality model we’ve tested. So many new binocular brands and models are in the market now, and some confusion is inevitable. Athlon Optics, a relatively new company, currently has 28 different models and six distinct binocular lines. If you’re the kind of person who prefers the stability (and availability) of a better-known brand, look toward our runner-up and budget picks.

Runner-up: Celestron TrailSeeker

Celestron’s TrailSeeker binoculars are rugged and have an expansive field of view. Photo: Dan Koeppel

Buying Options

Our runner-up, the Celestron TrailSeeker 8x42s, have rugged, armored construction and were among the lightest binoculars we tested, at 23 ounces (the Athlons weigh two ounces more). Celestron has been making high-quality consumer telescopes since the 1960s, but also offers a huge line of binoculars (over 14 lines, and more than 30 different models).

Optically, the TrailSeeker offered exceptional light-gathering abilities. I remember watching a northern harrier soaring against the sky and the colors of the streaks below were as sharp as can be. Another bonus is this pair’s ability to focus close—as near as 6.5 feet, with a field of view of 426 feet at 1,000 yards. However, the outer edges of that expansive field of view had some mild distortion. The streaks on a Lincoln’s sparrow got a little mushy through the edges of the Celestron lenses, yet remained razor-sharp through the lenses of the Athlon Optics Midas ED. Most users probably won’t notice this, but the Athlons were clearly superior, to my trained eye.

One caveat: The Celestrons we received had an odd catch in the focus dial; a second pair we checked out in store didn’t have that flaw. Be sure to check the pair you end up with to make sure everything moves smoothly.

Budget pick: Carson VP

The Carson VP is about as inexpensive as a really good pair of binoculars can be. Photo: Dan Koeppel

Buying Options

We can’t really recommend any binoculars that cost under $100; those tend to have very poor optics and aren’t durable enough to survive hard knocks without coming out of alignment. But for just a bit more, the very functional Carson VP pair offers excellent optics, a minimum focus distance 10 feet closer than the Nikon ProStaff 5, and rugged waterproof and fogproof construction.

Buying Options

The Pentax AD 8 x 25 WP are among the smallest compact binoculars we tested. They are truly pocket-size and lightweight, and they offer excellent light-gathering glass, which is crucial for making out detail on distant or obscured subjects in nature. They also have a comfortable and easy-to-hold design. Compact binoculars don’t have the light-gathering ability of full-size models, so for very distant subjects or for viewing in lower light, you’ll still want your full-size binoculars. But, in exchange they offer exceptional portability and convenience and they’re a must for backpackers, sightseers who need a pair to stow in a suitcase, or for any situation where every ounce counts.

Compact binoculars are essentially scaled-down versions of full-size binoculars, with similar rubberized construction to protect against impacts, waterproof seals, a central focusing knob, twisting eyecups, and foldable hinges—yet they are about half the size and weight (around 10 ounces vs. 25 ounces or more). Because the lenses are narrower, the field of view (how wide an area you see while looking through them) is reduced compared with that of any full-size model. But, particularly if you have neck/shoulder pain or don’t mind sacrificing a little optical performance for the ease of packing them in a pocket or tote bag, they’re a solid choice for “light” birding, butterfly-watching, or botanizing. They’re also ideal for mountain biking or backpacking, when you may want to look at a couple things on the trip, but they’re not constantly in use.

I reviewed 10 pairs of compact binoculars from widely available brands before choosing the Pentax AD as our compact pick. The optics on all the compact binoculars I tested are good (even great) quality; all have retractable eyecups that sort of spin down to be flush with the lenses if you wear glasses; most are armored/rubberized, which means you can bump them around a bit, and (probably) even drop them, and they won’t be knocked out of alignment. Still, when all the compact models rode around in my back seat, I just kept reaching for the Pentax AD rather than the others.

The Pentax AD’s weight is feather-light, at 9.6 ounces (less than half the 25-ounce weight of the Athlon Midas 8×42 binoculars, our top full-size pick). All compacts—in particular the high-magnification ones—are prone to “tunnel vision” due to a narrow field of view that makes it hard to find a distant target through the lens. Optically, the Pentax AD compacts have a wider field of view than some of the other compacts we tested, and the colors on birds, flowers, and butterflies appeared just as bright under normal conditions.

The Pentax AD are compact enough to fit in a pocket. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

Also, unlike every other model we tested (except the Nikon Prostaff compacts), the Pentax AD’s fasteners for the straps are located between the eyepieces, not along the sides of the body where they poke into your thumbs as you focus. Of course, this meant the straps tend to get in the way a bit whenever you lift the binoculars to your eyes, but this was a minor inconvenience rather than a dealbreaker. The rubberized eyepieces of the Pentax AD also felt comfortable against my eyes and are also less prone to temperature fluctuations in the field, so you won’t freeze when the weather is cold.

With rubberized eyepieces and well-placed fasteners for the straps, the Pentax AD were comfortable to use. Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

The Pentax AD featured hinges that fold independently of each other (depending on the width of your eyes) and can be tightened to hold a set distance. If the hinge is too loose, each time you raise the binoculars to your eyes you need to squish them together or apart (very annoying!). But I found the Pentax AD hinges just right.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

If you want a pair of binoculars for traveling or for the convenience of having a pair you can slip into your pocket, then a compact pair is for you. However, for distant subjects, or viewing in dim light (like, under the canopy of the rainforest), or for quickly finding fast-moving birds in dense vegetation, you’ll probably want to buy full-size binoculars rather than compacts.

What to look forward to

Athlon Optics, the company that makes our top-pick binoculars, has a new pair of 10 x 25 compact binoculars coming out. After field-testing a beta version, we found the optics and ergonomics to be top-notch, but also found issues with the hinges and rubberized armor, which Athlon tells us are being fixed prior to its release, which is set for later this spring.

Care, maintenance, and use

A simple trick for spotting stuff faster with binoculars:Don’t hold your binoculars up to your eyes and thenpan and scan for what you’re trying to spot. You’ll never get there. Instead, with the naked eye, stare up at what you want to see, then raise the binoculars to your gaze. That’ll allow whatever you’re looking at to instantly pop into your magnified view.

As for cleaning your binoculars’ lenses, what you don’t want to do is start cleaning by breathing on and then rubbing the lenses with something like a microfiber cloth, lens wipe or—heaven forbid—your shirtsleeve. That’s because doing so may lead to the dust that’s already on your lens leaving tiny scratches. Instead, start with a lens pen or bulb-type blower to remove that dust, then go ahead and use either lens wipes or fluid and a microfiber cloth. For more info, visit our guide to the best camera cleaning gear (the routine for cleaning binoculars is fundamentally the same).

The competition

Given the extreme similarity of design across makes and models, minor details of construction and performance can take on outsize importance. If you’re a long-time binoculars user, the most surprising difference will be that most models now focus in reverse direction compared with your old pair, meaning now you crank right for closer-in objects. In a couple of models (e.g., Opticron Oregon 4 LE WP), the strap hooks were located exactly where I’d rest my thumbs when looking through binoculars; maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t get used to that. In one of the Opticron models, the black paint was chipping off the strap rivets as I pulled them out of the box, and the ring around one of the eyecups had become loose and was freely spinning by the time I attached the neck strap. In the Nikon Prostaff 7S model, the rubberized coating is so tacky that it kept pulling back on my fingertips (under the fingernail) as I was working the focus knob. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it wasn’t comfortable either. Obviously, these are personal annoyances, and none was enough to knock any particular model out of consideration for top pick. But it is worth noting that the Athlon Optics Midas ED didn’t present any of these issues.

Other flaws of the top binoculars focused mainly on what they didn’t do. For example, in several models (e.g., Nikon Prostaff 7S, Opticron Discovery WP PC), I found little details to complain about, like the fact that the twisting plastic eyecup was physically too easily pushed down as I carried it around, so each time I would raise the binoculars to my eyes, they’d be at wildly unbalanced levels. Even more annoying (and painful), several pairs I tested produced mild to fairly severe eyestrain, that ache behind the pupils when staring for more than a few seconds at a time through the lenses (memorably with the Eagle Optics Denali pair and a couple of Opticron models), or resulted in my eyes having a jittery little kick after I put the binoculars down and tried to focus on something else (say, my field notebook). This transition was smooth and virtually seamless in the top pairs of binoculars of the bunch I tested (e.g., Athlon, Carson, and Nikon), less so in other makes and models.

Incidentally, one odd problem with the Nikon Monarch 5 (our pick in our previous binoculars guide) was a loud, rubber-on-rubber squeaking sound the focusing wheel often made when coming into contact with the rubber housing. I would have thought this was a random, fixable issue, but judging from online reviews, others complained about this too. The problem seems limited to individual pairs, so send yours back if they start doing this.

Alpen Shasta Ridge: Though we loved this company’s more-expensive Midas model, we were less impressed with this cheaper sibling. Focusing was difficult, feeling soft and difficult to get exactly right. These also offered noticeably inferior light-gathering compared with the Athlon Optics Midas ED pair. Plus, since we tested this pair Alpen has ceased operations. We expect these to become hard to find.

Carson 3D: A very small field of view produced tunnel vision, so these aren’t useful for close-distance viewing.

Eagle Optics Denali: These didn’t do well at resolving white objects. We tried to use them to look at an adult western gull at the beach, and the image appeared fuzzy, with some loss of clarity at the edge of view.

Nikon Monarch 5: This model was our previous pick, but the current crop of binoculars outmatch this model. In addition to a squeaky focus wheel (possibly a one-off problem), these binoculars’ smaller field of view led to a sort of tunnel vision with birds in dense cover.

Nikon Monarch 3: These binoculars yielded images less sharp than those of the Monarch 5 pair. The Monarch 3 binoculars are also a bit larger than their higher-end cousin. Also, colors viewed in bright glare through them appeared fuzzy.

Nikon Prostaff 7S: These were very acceptable binoculars in terms of optics, but had a problem with loose eyecups that pushed down too easily.

Opticron Explorer WA Oasis-C: This model has been discontinued by the manufacturer. When we tested it, this pair’s optics were lacking in sharpness enough to lead to some eyestrain, and the focus knob moved sluggishly, making it difficult to keep up with fast-moving objects.

Opticron Discovery WP PC: The good image quality of these binoculars was overshadowed by an eyecup that pushed down too easily.

Opticron T3 Trailfinder WP: Our test model came with a loose ring around one of the eyecups. The individual eyecup focus suffered from poor ergonomics, characterized by an odd bump where a you would rest your thumb, making the binoculars hard to hold.

Opticron Oregon 4 LE WP: Optical flaws included some distortion and glare. These binoculars had ergonomic issues, too, including a strap hook in an odd spot that interfered with the eyecup cover and eyecup focus wheel.

Vixen Optics Foresta DCF HR: These were an initial favorite, despite a slight brownish view in certain scenarios, like viewing seascapes. But after some usage, we noticed very poor low-light performance, such as seeing virtually no color in backlit warblers up in tree canopy. This pair also had eyecups that loosened over time.

Vortex Optics Crossfire: These seemed like a throwback to the past, with a cheap, flimsy feel, poor distance resolution, and limited low-light clarity.

Compact Binoculars

I reviewed 10 binoculars from widely available brands offering compact models in a range of sizes and shapes. Most had 8-power magnification, from the smallest available (8 x 25, 8.5 x 21) to ones that looked and felt more like full-size binoculars (8 x 32, 8 x 33).

The Pentax Papilio II 8.5 x 21 and the Nikon ProStaff 8 x 25 ATB are both “chunky” compacts with offset eye-pieces (as opposed to the more common roof prism design), and may be more comfortable for some users because these pairs can be easier to grip. Unfortunately, the Papilio took far too long to focus (though on the plus side, it’s marked “extremely-close focusing,” and it is), and though the Nikons were satisfactory, I found myself getting slight eyestrain when focusing on distant objects, like ducks floating on a lake.

The Carson RD 8 x 26 waterproof, Levenhuk Karma Pro 8 x 25, Maven C.2 10 x 28, and Minox 8 x 25 are part of a slew of “new compact” binoculars that resemble shrunken-down versions of the full-size 8 x 42 models, but were about two-thirds the size and weight. At this size, though, they’re too large to slip into most pockets, unless you have a huge coat on, taking away the very portability that we were looking for. I also found the quality lacking across the board—eyepieces that wouldn’t stop spinning (Maven), eyecups that didn’t sit flush with the eye (Levenhuk, Minox), and distortion of distant objects (Carson).

The Athlon Talos 8 x 32, Minox BV 8 x 33, and Vortex Diamondback Classic 8 x 32 are “tweener” or “large compact” binoculars—not particularly compact, but a size down from full-size. They feature the largest focusing wheel, wide/heavy bodies, and weigh as much as some full-size models. Though I wouldn’t trade them in for my go-to 8 x 42 pair (due to the narrower field of view), I actually found them to be a comfortable size for birding/nature-study, and didn’t find serious drawbacks during testing (though the Vortex Diamondback gave me minor eyestrain).